Optimizing UT's Performance
Note: A screen with 8 players on it firing flak cannons at each other will rarely run "smoothly". The object of optimizing performance should be to get UT to run with as few stutters as realistically possible on your current setup at the sacrifice of some of the more refined visual elements.
Before you start, you should also a decision as to which is more important to you: pristine, superbly detailed graphics, or fast gameplay. (I mean, who cares how detailed the skins are when the object is to turn their contents into giblets?) On many machines, it is difficult to accommodate both.
With a 233Mhz processor, 160MB of RAM and an 8MB Voodoo2 card, expect average frame rates between 25 and 30 FPS. If you want to see how your specific setup measures up against other Mac owners, check the FPS database at Accelerate your Mac.
If you have 160MB of physical RAM or less:
UT is a notorious RAM hog. You will run into intermittent "Out of Memory Errors" if the Get Info memory requirement is not set to at least 120000k. If you don't have a free 120MB of physical RAM with the OS running, you'll have to turn Virtual Memory on. Luckily, the more recent implementation of VM isn't the FPS killer it was prior to Mac OS 8.6. Even with Virtual Memory on, you can generate more than decent frame rates out of UT.
If you turn Virtual Memory on and still run into slowdowns try as many of the below until it runs smoothly:
| Turn off weapon flash | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Game) |
| Lower the screen resolution to 640x480 | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Video) |
| Set the sound quality to low | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Audio) |
| Set the skin detail to low | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Video) |
| Change Minimum Desired Framerate to 50 | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Video) |
| Turn off dynamic lighting | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Video) |
| Lower the texture detail | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Video) |
| Turn off decals | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Video) |
| Turn off music | (UT Menu Options:Preferences:Audio) |
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Some people have also recorded framerate increases with the HUD off.
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(UT Menu Options:Preferences:HUD) |
| Also, changing your weapon hand to "Hidden" will help. If you are desperate for a performance increase, give these a shot | |
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If you are running UT in RAVE (ATI Cards):
Open the console (~) and enter "preferences".
This will open the "Advanced Options" window.
Under RAVE Driver settings:
Set Vertex Lighting to "false"
Set Coronas to "false"
Set Curved Surfaces to "false"
